


you said that fusion was the broken heart that's lonely's only thought

by janie_tangerine



Series: the jaimebrienne spite countdown to season eight [27]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne of Tarth Has Issues, Comfort/Angst, Dark, Dyslexia, End of the World, F/M, I SUPPOSE IT COUNTS, Idiots in Love, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Mental Health Issues, Moral Dilemmas, Nuclear Warfare, Nuclear Weapons, POSSIBLE SELF-HARM (sort of involuntary but it counts I think), Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Worth Issues, Sexual Content, Spitefic, The Author Regrets Nothing, Weapons of Mass Destruction, World War III, grand gestures of the MORALLY AMBIGUOUS KIND, guys LOOK AT WHAT I BASED THIS ON BEFORE MOVING ON WITH IT SO YOU KNOW, morally gray fluff, past abusive relationship, this is tagged choose not to warn for a reason thread carefully XD, this might be AU but it's full of shade for the show believe me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 01:49:09
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18863281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: In which they're stuck manning a nuclear bunker on the brink of WWIII.





	you said that fusion was the broken heart that's lonely's only thought

**Author's Note:**

> HELLO, IT'S BEEN LONGER THAN I WISHED AND I HAVE FIVE SPITEFICS LEFT BUT I'M FINISHING THEM EVEN IF I END UP BEING DONE AFTER THIS MESS OF A SEASON IS OVER.
> 
> That said: hi, I still haven't recovered from the utter fuckery that was 8x05 and in retrospective the last scene of 8x04 (WHY GDI WHY DID YOU HAVE TO GO THERE SHOW???) and I decided that I'm nowhere near accepting that and I'll go back to ignoring that anything post half of 8x04 happened.... after I get out of my system this and the next two spitefics. The next two should be canon fix-it. This one...... well. I had been wanting to write au fic based on Josh Ritter's [The Temptation of Adam](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FH9MhovIY9g) for literal years (I would highly advertise to listen/read the lyrics to guess where this is going just in case), and I realized that it actually would have worked great to... work out of my system a LOT of things I hated about 8x04 and the show's character choices re jaime so I might have gone for it. AND SINCE IT'S NOT SPITEFIC SERIES WITHOUT A DUMBASS ANON, this was planned for this absolute *gem* of an unpublished anon that was sent to the same friend who got the anon hate behind spitefic #13 and who only got this and other pearls of wisdom for telling people to can it when it came to send anon hate to me *shrug*:
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> @ person above I'm still pissed that you'd tell that to others and not to me, but ANYWAY, that was the original ask.
> 
> THEN THERE HAD TO BE D&D DECIDING TO CHUNK EIGHT YEARS OF CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT FROM THE WINDOW and so I figured that hey, if they have *certain* ideas, I might go with the same prospect because fuck it. Have fun finding out all the shade I purposefully threw at both 8x04 and 8x05 in here. ;)
> 
> Fair warning: from the next one we're going back to our usual fluff level. This one is... significantly darker than my usual, they're both fairly messed up, *Jaime* is fairly messed up, the ending is good for them but.... not so much IN GENERAL and I tagged it choose not to warn for a reason. Sorry but I had some venom to let out *and* I actually considered finishing it more ambiguously same as the original when I started it on Sunday, then I watched the episode and decided that the darker ending was the best fuck you I could come up with, so: don't expect moral exceedingly good choices out of any of the two of them. Hopefully I could sell it. ;) The title is from the song I took inspiration from,they're GRRM's the show is sadly D&D's and I know nothing.
> 
> See you in the next two days with the next one which is going to be WAY MORE UPLIFTING SHOW CANON HOPEFULLY. XD four to go and I'm finishing this, idc if it's not a countdown anymore. ;)

Volunteering to go down in that bunker isn’t really such a hard choice, come to think of it.

Then again, no one is also there to dissuade him from it — his father has long stopped giving a fuck about him, right about the time Jaime lost the right hand, as if it wasn’t fighting a war _he_ helped start, not that it’s near over yet, or there would be no need for _volunteers_ to man all of the warheads hidden underground across England now.

His father won’t care. Tyrion is currently having the time of his life on England’s first space colony off-Earth, light years from here and from their mess of a family, and he’s not here to dissuade him, and he’s most likely not coming back.

Cersei —

He’s _not_ going to think about Cersei. Not when it was _her_ idea that he’d enroll because then their father would stop harping at him to find a wife already, and he thought it wasn’t such a hard thing to do for love, because he loved her, didn’t he, he _thought_ he did anyway, or maybe he thought _she_ did love him back, and then she never contacted him when he was with Aerys, and she barely wanted to see him when he came back.

He couldn’t see her anymore. He couldn’t even talk to her anymore. So he volunteered.

 

( _What,_ she had said, _are you even trying to accomplish here? Giving your life some sense by going in an underground bunker for a year and possibly more staring at a bomb?_

 _Still a better option than waiting on you_ , he had spat back.

 _As if,_ she had laughed _, and who else would even have you, like_ that _? No one else could love_ you _but me, not if they knew. No one with some basic self-respect would waste time with you_.

 _Fine,_ he had said, _that wasn’t what I was looking for, anyway_.)

 

 _The things I do for love_ , he had thought bitterly. _Fuck me for not even wondering if she really reciprocated it or not_.

It was easy to be accepted. Former war hero, lost his hand for King and country, sacrificed it to stop a his mad general from blowing up the entire western coast of France and therefore giving everyone a chance to salvage the entire shitshow and to _not_ go straight into World War Three, no one even thought he wouldn’t be a good fit for the job, and no one gave a damn that he didn’t have a background when it came to nuclear physics or how nuclear warfare actually works beyond possibly destroying the planet by pressing one single red button.

He stands near the hatch as the other person that has been selected for this one particular location walks towards him.

After all, no one would have needed him to know shit about nuclear warfare when his companion for the next year, possibly five if they’re told there’s the need, is a top notch scientist with _that_ exact specialization who at twenty-eight has already completed two PhDs in record time, has published three groundbreaking articles (that he’s told of) and one book that people in the field saw as some kind of second coming. He read up on her. Apparently most other scholars in her field are desperate that she volunteered for _this_ kind of job when she could be outside contributing to research, but she was apparently very firm in her resolution.

“Brienne Tarth,” she introduced herself, no-nonsense, extending her left hand.

Jaime looks up at her — she’s slightly taller than he is. She has blonde, straw-like hair tied in a bun behind her head, larger shoulders than his own, a homely face with maybe too full lips, a nose that’s been broken at least twice, she’s wearing the same blue army jumpsuit they gave _him_ to wear so they could take the usual congratulatory pictures before they have to take their bags and get down inside the bunker.

“Jaime Lannister,” he tells her, shaking her hand. His skin is a lot colder than his. “Woah, I guess that if this is the new Cold War we could keep each other warm?”

She rolls her eyes. “That wasn’t half as bad as the last time someone tried to convince me they were into me and they were lying,” she whispers, the corner of her mouth quirking upwards in spite of herself, “but given how cold you felt, maybe it’d be me doing all of the work and I’ve had enough of it where I come from.”

Then she moves to shake hands with the next person.

Jaime almost laughs, for the first time since — since the hand.

He thinks that if everything else fails, he’ll enjoy riling her up.

— —

“So,” he asks her a few days later when she hasn’t spoken to him for anything that’s not menial small talk, “how is it that you’re stuck in an underground bunker for the next year or possibly more with _me_ instead of writing papers up there?”

“Why, you know I write papers for a living?” She quips back as she opens one of their cans of tuna — they had decided, upon sharing chores, that she was going to cook and he was going to clean,

 

( _don’t they have canned food that could last them for a century down here_?)

 

and he pretends to scowl at her.

“Hey, I _do_ look up the people I’m going to spend an entire year with, thank you very fucking much.”

She shrugs. “My business,” she replies, curtly even if not rudely.

“All right, all right,” he concedes, deciding that she’s intriguing. She’s nowhere near the kind of person he usually talks to, and most people usually fall all over themselves to answer him if he asks a question, or at least most used to before, well, _before_.

Then again, he has a year to find out, doesn’t he?

— —

If anything, he decides a month in, she’s a _challenge_. He’s poked and prodded at her for this long but she’s always half-smirked and never answered while rolling her eyes, even if lately he thinks she might be doing it more in fondness than irritation.

Even if he’s sure he _did_ irritate her. Probably still does.

Too bad that he never really ever knew how to make sure others have his attention otherwise.

“So what,” he asks her as he cleans the plates in their tiny underground kitchen in their medium-sized underground bunker and she’s in the nuke room checking their communications tablet, “am I ever going to know why are you here?”

She puts it back in its place. Nothing from the outside, then.

“Why,” she asks, “am I ever going to know why are _you_ here?”

“You would if you asked,” he grins at her, but she just glares at him and it falls flat.

Damn it.

If he can’t even rile her up anymore, and she doesn’t obviously _care_ because she isn’t asking… well. His strategy is most likely not working.

He doesn’t know why it disappoints him to the point that his mouth feels bitter when he runs his tongue along the back of his teeth. Maybe it’s because he never was much good at making friends, maybe it’s because since it went all sour with Cersei _and_ Aerys and his hand and Tyrion leaving and following his dreams to space and leaving behind a planet without many hopes he’s felt even more alone than usual, maybe it’s that he’s that desperate to _talk_ to someone, and isn’t it just overtly pathetic that it’s the case —

But it hurts that she doesn’t seem to _care_ or that she seems to just be interested in working all day, especially when her work is really… just maintenance. She has to check that the warhead isn’t damaged and that it won’t blow up and the radiation levels and so on, but it’s nothing that hard — _he_ could that, with instructions.

 _Maybe your pretty face isn’t just so interesting on its own, hm? But of course it wouldn’t be. Not that you ever had much of a personality, brother dear_ , a voice that sounds like Cersei says, and he tries to not listen to it.

Maybe he should change ways. Maybe she doesn’t take him seriously because of that dumb first impression — maybe he should have kept his mouth shut, shouldn’t he?

Yeah, well, one thing he apparently never quite learned to do at the right times. But since running his mouth _would_ get his brother to laugh, back in the day, he somehow assumed it would work with anyone.

Figures he’d get it wrong.

— —

The tablet is dark (as usual) and the nuke’s radiation levels are within expected (as usual) when two weeks later she’s doing a crossword on the living room’s sofa and he’s pretending to clean the kitchen — it’s already cleaned, he did it an hour ago, but there’s nothing better to do, Brienne’s isn’t engaging in his usual poor attempts at conversation and her stack of crosswords that she brought from outside aren’t really his thing.

 

( _Come on_ , Cersei would say back in the day, _it’s impossible that you can’t write the definitions in without some inverted letter. Are you that stupid or what?_

He never quite learned to like them.)

 

“How do you spell apocalypse?” She asks.

“ _What_?” He almost drops his plate.

“Five letters for apocalypse,” she says, looking straight at him, her eyebrow slightly raised. It’s the first thing she’s asked him outside small talk until now and for a moment he’s completely taken aback, then he realizes that he has no idea because he was _always_ shit at this kinda thing, but _maybe —_

“W, W, I, I, I,” he answers, and then she glares at him for a moment before her lips crack in a smile and she lets out a half-laugh, and her almost aborted smile makes her eyes light up, and she might not be _pretty_ or beautiful like Cersei or like most women that ever made a pass at him, not that he ever said yes, but for a moment it seems like she’s glowing, and _has he made her laugh_ , he might have, and why is it that he wants to do it _again_?

“Fair,” she concedes, half-wheezing. “The second letter is an _h_ , though.”

“Too bad,” he says, “I like my definition better.”

“Can’t disagree,” she sighs, and the it turns out that it was _chaos_ , but that doesn’t matter because that evening she actually doesn’t leave the moment he starts making the dishes. She doesn’t _ask_ him anything, but she offers to dry them, saving him a fair amount of time, and he says yes, and they don’t talk any further, but — it feels nice to have her next to him.

He can feel how warm she is next to him. Fuck. If only he hadn’t been feeling cold since Aerys, and you’d think it couldn’t be, not when Aerys wanted to _burn_ —

He shakes his head and hands her another dish.

Suddenly, he wishes he could make her smile again, now, but nothing comes to his tongue, and so he says nothing. But when after that he asks her if she can give him one of the crossword magazines, she throws him one without saying a word.

He gets halfway through one before giving it up, but he brings it to his room.

— —

“You can have it back,” he tells her two days later.

She raises an eyebrow.

“Got bored already?”

He shrugs. “Not really. It’s just — never mind. Thanks anyway.”

He knows he sounds defensive. Brienne takes the magazine back and doesn’t press the issue, and he’s mighty thankful for it. Then she turns back towards the tablet.

“Nothing yet?”

“No,” she shrugs. “But they said they would only contact for urgent matters. Obviously there’s been nothing urgent, on the outside.”

“I suppose,” Jaime replies, his eyes falling on the glass covering the red button on the wall.

They’re under orders to press it, if they get the right dispatch.

Jaime wishes he knew what the assholes above were planning, since _one_ of those nukes could about annihilate half of a country and firing it would mean making sure _others_ fired.

And then they would be stuck down here while the world went up in nuclear flames.

Jaime shakes his head and looks at Brienne’s back as she heads to the other side of the bunker, towards the radiation levels screen.

Everything is in order. The light is beeping green.

Why wouldn’t it be?

— —

“You know,” she says a week later, in the middle of lunch, as they eat directly from a can of cold beans she didn’t feel like cooking today and he’s not even going to try, “there’s nothing wrong with being dyslexic.”

He almost drops the can.

“How the _hell_ —”

“Did I figure it out? I checked that magazine. All the crosswords you started have half of the right definitions but the letters are inverted, and so there’s no other half. It wasn’t too hard.”

“Oh.” Right. She _would_. She’s a goddamned genius, isn’t she? Same as his brother, same as — “Well, then I guess it’s obvious why it’s not a good idea.”

She stares at him, as if she’s trying to figure him out, but not in an inquisitorial way. She bites down on her lip, her eyes looking down, seeming insecure for a few moments, and — she’s never — she’s always been either cold or closed off, but never _insecure_. Not until now.

“That doesn’t mean —” She starts. She shakes her head. “Maybe we could — do a couple together in the evenings? Instead of, you know. Just -- not talking.”

He doesn’t know why something in the way she’s looking at him makes him think this might be some kind of test.

He gives her his best smile, or what he always assumed might be.

“Sure,” he says, “at least we won’t bore each other as we have up until now, huh?”

“I’d — I’d like that,” she says, suddenly sounding pleased but surprised at the same time. As if she hadn’t expected it to go over well.

They do one together later that night.

He actually knows most of the answers — Brienne is apparently not very up to date with the last fifty years’s worth of pop culture and he _is_ , and she writes down the definitions in pencil until she throws it at him and if he mixes things up she just tells him that he needs to erase and that’s it. No judgment, no other remarks.

They do another. And another.

She asks the four letter definition for _extremely useful implement,_ he looks at her straight as he says that it has to be _dick_ even if he knows it’s most likely _tool_ , and she _looks_ at him and then laughs, hard, so much it brings tears to her eyes as she tells him that he _really_ doesn’t know what subtlety is even as she laughs on and on, and part of him feels warm, thinking that he has never made anyone laugh like that in years, and her eyes do light up when she does, and of course it’s the wrong definition, but somehow it doesn’t matter. Not when it took him months to do it, and he had thought she’d just ignore him

 

( _same as his father did, same as Cersei has done since he came back without the hand, same as any other person he tried to talk to after that, and sometimes he wishes he could have gone to space with his brother but they’d have never had_ him _on that one expedition_ )

 

and they have nine months left down here.

Somehow, they don’t seem too gloomy right now.

— —

Halfway into month four, he’s downed her third shot when he blurts it out — they’ve been playing some dumb game that his brother came up with a lifetime ago, during which you have to guess something about the other person and if you’re right they have to take a drink until you get it wrong, and for now they’ve just thrown around dumb, nonsensical stuff —

“People tend to not take you seriously,” he says, immediately regretting it when her smile dies down, but then she shrugs and takes a drink.

“Can’t disagree,” she shrugs. “’S why I’m down here anyway.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Can I ask or is it off limits still?”

She looks at him. Then she drinks again. “You’ve seen me,” she says.

“I look at you every damned day, Brienne,” he says. “So what?”

“So, even if you’d think that looks wouldn’t be an issue when it comes to nuclear physics, well, they are. I mean, I — I enrolled at sixteen. I was that good, I guess. Everyone thought I was a joke. My thesis advisor had actually planned to publish some of my work under his name.”

“ _The hell_?”

“I told him I’d press charges if he did and I didn’t care if it ruined my academical chances. He eventually didn’t, and that was what actually got me the PhD and the grants and so on. But — before coming down here, I — I was doing some team work on fusion-related matters. It was all men other than me. I thought — I thought they actually did respect me. I was younger than all of them and with more publications to my name than most of them, mostly because I really — didn’t do anything else other than working, up there.” She drinks some more, not quite looking at him. “A number of them asked me out. I might have said yes to a few. I thought I had options, you know.”

“I guess you… didn’t?”

She shakes her head. “The kid who cleaned things up in the lab after we were done said that he heard them betting on who’d get to, well, fuck me first. I guess. I hung around to make sure he wasn’t lying, and he wasn’t. I — I decided that if _that_ was all the thanks I would get for a project where _I_ was doing half of the work in a seven people team, then what was the bloody point? I left and volunteered to come down here.” She sighs. “I’m not very proud of it.”

“… You’re not _proud_ of it?”

She snorts. “I got as far as I did not caring about what others thought. I should have taken it and moved on and show them that I wouldn’t get hurt by it, you know. But I kind of was. And I was tired, I guess. They can finish on their own, for all I care.”

“Well, they were arses,” he says, drinking along with her. “What the fuck. I mean, who even _does_ that? You know they were jealous, right?”

“ _Jealous_?”

“You said it. Younger, more talented people aren’t usually much good news for that kind of arse. Also, don’t think I’ll judge you if you think that you came down here because you were running away. I did about the same fucking thing.”

“You _ran_ here?”

He shrugs, takes another drink. _Should I tell her_ , he thinks, and then he decides that fuck it, she puts herself on the line five minutes ago, he’ll chance her. He tells her everything — Cersei, the war, his father, his hand, Aerys, all of it, and he’s about to reach for the umpteenth vodka shot by the time he’s done. “So,” he says as he does, “I mean, I’m useless like this, no one gives a fuck, I don’t even want to see anything army-related ever again, just being in the same room with my sister makes me feel sick these days, a year in a bunker underground seemed like an excellent choice. Cersei is probably discussing how fucking stupid I could be for doing that in the first fucking place, but —”

He stops talking as Brienne’s large, rough hand gently covers his before he can lift up the full glass.

“You’re not,” she says, her voice barely audible, her eyes not quite looking at him but his wrist instead.

“What?” He’s so taken aback he doesn’t even get what she’s talking about.

“I mean, if _you_ ’re stupid for being down here what am I? A complete idiot?”

“You’re _not_ —” He starts.

“My point exactly,” she half-smiles. She lets his hand go. For a moment he wants to tell her that there’s no need. “Also, don’t think I didn’t notice. That — you _did_ try to make me laugh until that crossword, didn’t you?”

“Is that a crime?” He asks, cautiously.

“I think the last person who ever put that much effort in it was my father, Lannister, and he died three years ago. And I know I’m — I don’t trust people too easily. Not if they come with your kind of face, no offense.”

“None taken,” he says, suddenly feeling lighter. “Not many people find me _that_ funny, anyway.”

She grabs his shot glass and drinks it herself. “Too bad,” she says. “You are.” Then her eyes go wide and stands up, saying that she’s tired and that she needs to sleep this off.

He bides her goodnight, watching her leave, her large shoulders disappearing inside her room.

His left hand is shaking as he pours himself another drink.

— —

 _You really are that desperate, aren’t you_?

He’s washing his hand in the tiny bathroom annexed to his room as Cersei’s voice speaks to him again.

He shakes his head.

 _It’s not desperation_ , he tells himself, because he knows that’s not really his sister, that’s just — that’s just the part of him that she might have poisoned for real, that always speaks in her not so sweet words anymore, that never has a single kind thing for him, and sometimes he thinks, _it’s not a good thing that’s what I think of myself, but that’s what they made me, isn’t it_?

But no.

Jerking off thinking about Brienne Tarth was _not_ desperation. Not to him.

 _Oh, how so? You really must be if_ that _is what gets you hot and bothered. Have you already forgotten how you were meant to be with someone else_?

He turns the water hotter.

It’s scalding now. The soap has long since worn off, not that mixing it with his stump felt that great in the first place.

 _I wasn’t_ , he thinks. _I wasn’t and there’s nothing desperate in wanting her. So she’s not you. So who cares? You’ve had others. I can find other people attractive now, can’t I?_

She laughs.

 _And_ that _is attractive according to you? You really were the stupidest of us all_.

He turns the water hotter.

Then he screams.

— —

“Jesus,” Brienne says not long later, bandaging it up gently, after running some cream over it, “you almost got a burn. I mean, it’s _kind of_ burned. Did the heater malfunction?”

He shakes his head. “Nah. I just — I was cold when I woke up and I was thinking about… something I shouldn’t have. I didn’t realize I turned it on so high. Serves me right, huh?”

He waits for her to laugh, but she just stares at him and shakes her head as she ties up the bandage. “No,” she says, “getting your hands almost burned doesn’t serve _anything_. And it happens to the best of us.”

She pats his wrist. “Just pay more attention next time, how about that?”

He snorts, feeling something ugly come up from somewhere in his guts, work its way up through his throat and up to his tongue, and he tries to stop it, he does, but —

“I’m fucking useless, am I not?”

“Wait, how did you get _there_ now?” She asks, sitting back down.

“Come on. This is supposed to be a two-people job because you need one scientist to check on that nuke and someone with military background to press the button and take the rep for it when orders arrive, but you’re the one with the background and the knowledge. My contribution isn’t — I’m _not_ contributing, like this I can’t even wash the dishes for two weeks or whatever, and okay, whatever, sure, if that tablet lights up red I have to nuke whichever place they tell me to because I signed for it and it’s my goddamned duty and whatever, but that’s — not the point. I can’t even fucking avoid getting the _one_ hand I have left burned, I’m down here because I don’t have a single family member left here who wants to see my face and after Aerys everyone is glad to congratulate me but won’t _have_ me, I think it’s obvious.”

She stares at him with that large, blue eyes of hers. She tentatively moves her hand back to his wrist, like it’s something she’s not adjusted to do, like she has to learn how to touch someone else like _that_ , like she never has the chance to console anyone and like no one ever consoles _her_ and she doesn’t know how to go about it.

She opens her mouth, and he can see that she’s considering saying something relevant, something _important_ , something meaningful, but then she squeezes her wrists, her lips tentatively curling upwards, barely smiling, barely —

“Never mind that I’m here because I deluded myself in the worst possible way,” she says, “so I don’t know about who’s pathetic out of the two of us. I always told myself that I knew what it meant to be in that field with my looks and everything, and I swore myself I’d go on at all costs, and then I didn’t and I’m hiding here because I couldn’t take it anymore. But never mind _that_. I can hear that telling you — what I wanted to, wouldn’t work.”

“Why?”

“You won’t believe me. I know you wouldn’t. But I can tell you that when you started suggesting ridiculous clues at my crosswords, well, I went back to my room that night. And I realized that I couldn’t remember the last time I laughed.”

“ _What_?”

“I couldn’t. I still can’t. All things considered, I’d rather have you here than anyone else.”

_Oh._

He thinks his heart skips a beat at that, and when she moves her hand away he desperately wants it back on his bandaged skin, and if only she could bandage up every other wound he feels on him even if you can’t _see_ it —

“And I don’t think you’re pathetic,” he shrugs. “I mean, I can’t judge anyone for deciding that they had enough with the arses above continuously not getting them and wanting to flip them the middle finger now, can I?”

“Good to know that,” she says, “except that I always told myself I wouldn’t let other people fuck up my life. Guess I did anyway.”

“Hey, at least you tried for that long. I let every single person I knew bar my brother fuck up _mine_ since the moment I was born.”

She stares at him, then goes to grab a bourbon bottle that’s in their rations. They have a _lot_ of alcohol.

She says nothing as she opens it, takes a drink and hands it over to him.

They fall asleep after it’s empty, his head on her shoulder, not moving from the sofa.

 _She’s warm_ , he thinks. Warm and less hard and angular than one would think. The few times they could afford it, _after_ , well, _after_ they weren’t just siblings anymore, _he_ never could sleep with his head on Cersei’s shoulder, it was the contrary.

All the time.

They don’t talk about it the next day, but she cooks and cleans the plates until his burn is healed and never makes him feel bad about it.

At night, he jerks off thinking of her pretty, wide blue eyes over him, of her mouth touching his, of her arms grasping his shoulders and dragging him close, trying to not listen to that small voice of Cersei’s in the back of his head saying that he really needs to be at the end of his rope to get hard over _her_ or wanting to fuck her in the first place.

Well.

If anything he came down here also to establish that she _didn’t_ own either him or his damned physical reactions to other people now, hasn’t he?

He just doesn’t think he’ll ever act on it. It’s already enough that she doesn’t hate him, or doesn’t think he’s a walking failure, and actually seems to value his presence somewhat.

Ruining it when they still have eight months in here give or take would _not_ be a good idea now, would it?

He doesn’t act on it.

— —

But one evening, they’re in his room, sharing another poor vintage bottle of wine, and he feels drunker than usual.

“It’s ridiculous,” he says, “I’m down here and I don’t even fucking know how _that_ works.”

“What, the nuke?” She asks, sounding amused.

“Well, _yes_. Never got the point to get schooled on physics, I guess.”

She laughs. “ _That_ isn’t too hard.”

“Yeah, I don’t think it’s for _you_.”

“Come on,” she says, “stop doing that.”

“Doing _what_?”

“Acting like you can’t get things because you somehow aren’t smart enough for them. Oh, fuck it, I couldn’t do my job if I couldn’t explain _anyone_ the basics. It’s not that hard. So,” she starts, “I suppose you don’t know how nuclear fusion works.”

“… No?”

“But you _do_ know that neutrons and protons are the parts of an atom, right?”

“Well, I wasn’t _that_ bad at chemistry,” he tries to joke.

“Fine. Then fusion is pretty much _that_. You have two atomic nuclei, as in, the inner part, the one made up by protons and neutrons, and you combine them together — the moment you do, they form _different_ nuclei and subatomic particles and while they do either energy is released or absorbed. So the moment you take the right element — which in our case over there is uranium or plutonium — and you bring it to critical mass, as in you take enough of it to make sure the chain starts and sustains itself, then you release both energy and radiation and there you have your nuke. Was it that hard?”

To Jaime’s surprise, it’s _not_. “Put it like _that_ —”

“Until you have to create one of those, you don’t really have to know the specifics.” Then she looks down at her hands, her eyes turning slightly sad.

“What’s that?” He asks.

“Something I always thought. I mean. This will sound stupid, but — I always thought that there was something kind of romantic in that.”

“In _nuclear fusion_?”

“Well, it’s — two lonely atoms coming together and generating energy to the point of burning everything around them. Maybe it’s the sad kind of romantic. But it’s a bit… like it’s the kind of thought that someone who is very alone and whose heart has been broken one time too many might have, you know? I have no idea where that came from and I probably did read too many crap romance novels while I was studying, but —”

That’s _it_ , he thinks, that’s it, he can’t hold back anymore, and before she finishes that sentence he’s grabbed the back of her head and kissed her, crashing his mouth against hers, and for a moment he thinks she won’t kiss back but she _does_ , oh she does, all urgency and teeth and hands on his face, and for a moment he feels so overwhelmed he could _faint_ , and then she moves back, staring at him, her mouth slightly parted, showing a hint of slightly crooked teeth —

 

( _she did tell him they couldn’t afford great dental care when she was a kid_ )

 

“I’ve never slept with anyone before,” she blurts.

“Tough luck, I’ve only ever slept with my sister before,” he shrugs.

“God,” she says, “we really are messed up, aren’t we?”

“Well, I don’t particularly want to think about _that_ now. Didn’t you want to try real life nuclear fusion or _what_? “ He asks instead, and she smiles again, tentatively, and they kiss again, and again, and he drags her on top of him on his small crappy bed, and she undoes his shirt and drags it over his head, and he lets her take off his clothes and hold him down against the mattress, and when she takes him in hand tentatively he groans in pleasure, and then he realizes that who the _fuck_ is ever going to hear them when they’re nine kilometers underground? _No one but her_ , he thinks, and he screams her name as she brings him off, he does the same when she rides him not long later, wet and warm and _perfect_ around him, and then she screams his own when he tells her to move over and buries his head inside her thighs and drives her over the edge with his tongue again and again and _again_ , and _this_ certainly counts for releasing energy, _doesn’t it_ , and he doesn’t hear Cersei’s voice at the back of his head once as she has him and he has her or they both have each other over and over and _over_.

If _this_ is what nuclear fusion is supposed to be like, maybe it’s not so bad.

— —

He wakes up pressed up in between Brienne and the wall. She’s still asleep, her hand on his hip, and he can barely see her face in the artificial light coming in from his window, but he raises his left hand tentatively, his thumb brushing over the freckles over her cheekbones, over and over, and she stirs under his touch, opening her eyes, smiling at him ever so slightly.

“Hey,” he tells her, the words getting caught in his throat.

“Hey,” she croaks back, her own hand rising up to touch his face.

“You up for some more nuclear fusion?”

She snorts, looks at her wristwatch — shit, she _still_ wears one —, looks back at him.

“I have another fifteen minutes,” she says, almost shyly, as if she can’t believe she just _said_ it —

“Good,” he says, and he reaches down with his left hand, finding her clit, his fingers pushing up inside her.

— —

She barely makes it in time — she tumbles out of the bed not even bothering to dress and goes to check the radiation levels wearing nothing. He stands, follows her, and the moment she declares everything under control and turns back to look at him, he licks his hand clean, very slowly and very deliberately.

They don’t make it back to her room.

— —

Three days later, they had to wash the sofa’s cover because it was wrecked by how many times they fucked on it, and at least three sets of sheets — once they start, it seems like there’s no stopping for real

 

( _maybe just like nuclear chain reactions_?)

 

and he’s not going to complain about any of that. They fuck on the sofa, in her bed, in _his_ bed, under the shower, the kitchen table, anywhere that’s not the chair in the nuke room, _that_ would be too much, he thinks, but that doesn’t seem to matter. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s been without for so long and she’s been so long without, _period_ , but it seems like they only stop to sleep or eat or check on the nuke and their communications tablet

 

( _no news for now_ )

 

and the rest of the time she’s holding him up against the wall as his tongue licks stripes all over her neck, or she’s riding him in her bed (larger than his), or he’s using his hand to bring her off relishing every moment that it’s no matter that it’s not the right one, hell, he might learn to like it better because at least he never touched Cersei with _that_ hand, or she’s using her mouth on him or he’s using his on her and the way she looks at him when she makes him come is honestly worthy of a goddamned painting, too bad he couldn’t provide it even _before_ he lost the hand.

But also the way she looks when _he_ makes her come is also worth of that, he thinks. Fuck, _all_ of her is — if every other person she ran into couldn’t appreciate those legs wrapped around their thighs or their back, if they couldn’t appreciate how soft her lips feel against their mouth or skin or face or their damned dick, if they couldn’t think of how good it would feel to have her large, rough hands roaming all over their naked skin, if they couldn’t drink her moans from her mouth, if they couldn’t make her laugh while fucking as they asked her to discuss nuclear fission while she was riding them, if they couldn’t see what a marvel she is beyond her looks then they were right arses and they didn’t deserve her.

 _He_ doesn’t deserve her, admittedly, but she doesn’t seem to care, and so neither does he, and when at the dawn of day four she looks at him with unruly hair all over the place and tells him with a smirk that it’s the first time in her life they actually aren’t sitting _completely straight_ , he feels like his heart has grown ten sizes.

They have coffee after checking on the nuke, her hand covering his naked right wrist, and he thinks, _at least for the next eight months we get to have this_.

— —

Right.

 _For the next eight months_.

— —

Admittedly, the first month he doesn’t even think about it.

It feels like some kind of honeymoon, the two of them just wrapped in each other, kissing when they wake up, doing the dishes together, doing her crosswords, _cooking_ together

 

( _fuck, she actually teaches him to and it’s not so hard_ )

 

and of course screwing each other senseless in either of their beds or the sofa or the bathroom or the damned kitchen table.

It’s good.

 _Too_ good.

And then he thinks, _what of when this is over_?

Suddenly, his stomach contorts on itself.

She most likely would go back to research after making everyone realize what they were losing, and why shouldn’t she? She’s a damned genius

 

( _shit, she actually managed to teach him basic physics to pass the time and it never felt as hard or complicated as it was in school_ )

 

and she has a _life_ , regardless of what she seems to think. She has a career in front of her, and he knows that the moment she resurfaces all the idiots who took her for granted won’t anymore. And now that she _knows_ that she’s not, well, _unattractive_ at least to him, he’s sure that she _would_ make sure everyone else knew she had options.

He can’t do his job anymore, he still lacks any serious education to do anything that’s not being in the military and he doubts he ever could go back there, his father cut him off, he doesn’t even _want_ to see Cersei ever again, Tyrion is _not_ coming back.

Does _he_ have options? Most likely not.

 _That’s why you always were an idiot. Now you got attached and she’s going to leave you because she can absolutely do better, and you’ll have deserved every second of it, and at some point she will see what kind of waste of time you are_.

He hadn’t missed his sister. Not at all.

 _Shut up_ , he says, knowing that he’s just talking to himself and hating it, hating it, hating it. _Shut up, you know nothing and maybe she will, but she doesn’t think I’m a waste of time._

_Or maybe she’s just that desperate and you’re there and that’s the best you can do, some kind of desperate handmaiden without self-esteem who’ll only consider you because no one would ever want her and she has no self-respect._

He laughs as he looks at his own mirror — Brienne is in the next room over, sleeping.

 _As if,_ he thinks, _if anyone out of the two of us is desperate and without self-respect, that’s me, not her. And who do I have to thank for that_?

There’s no answer.

Of course there’s not.

He slides out of the bathroom and back into the bed where she wraps her arm around his waist and draws him closer, not waking up yet.

Seven months left.

Seven.

— —

He doesn’t sleep much, that night.

— —

He thinks a lot, after.

He thinks that maybe he doesn’t hate this goddamned bunker at all. It’s not that small, after all, and it’s just the two of them, and it’s not as if he misses the outside world. Would he really care to leave if he had the choice?

 _Not if she was with you_ , that voice that sounds like _himself_ says.

As if.

It’s obvious she hates being down here. She _did_ say she came here to run away from her problems. She _did_ say that it felt like a defeat to have dumped everything and volunteered. He _has_ seen her working on something, scribbling on pieces of paper or writing on the only computer they have in here — it has no internet but she apparently doesn’t need it, and she _did_ say it could have been a new paper if she worked some more on it when they could go back upstairs. She looked happy, and who was he to tell her to not be?

Still. They don’t even live in the same town, he wouldn’t even know what to _do_ except maybe waiting for her to come back home in the evenings _if_ she’d have him, _and who’s the desperate handmaiden then?_ , and he couldn’t ask her to go with him wherever the army would send him next to do PR because of course it’s the only thing he’d be good for, his previous commander _did_ make sure to inform him of that before he went in the bunker.

And fuck, the idea of it makes his stomach turn over in itself until he feels like throwing up — they have a good thing going on, but of course it can’t be enough when they leave. It only could exist because they were stuck down here in a small bubble cutting off everything but that nuke, and it couldn’t last outside, maybe they would try but then she would understand that he’s not worth it, and this good, beautiful, _messed up_ thing they have (but still less messed up than what they had until now) wouldn’t survive in the real world. He knows that like he knows his right hand is gone and that he threw his life away and that she’s the only good thing he’s had since his brother left the planet for good.

Maybe _he_ is also running away from her problems. Too bad that she has something to go back to. He doesn’t.

Suddenly, he hopes the next six months pass slowly.

Very, very slowly.

— —

 _Maybe_ , he thinks, _maybe they’ll prolong it. Maybe they’ll give us those other five years. Wouldn’t that be sweet? Five years. The whole lot of them._

He doesn’t know if it’s likely, they did say that they would prefer to switch personnel down here in case there was further need. He feels his eyes burning at the prospect, and so what if it’s not healthy that he _wants_ to stay down here with her? He doesn’t need to be up above. _Up above_ was bad enough for thirty-eight years, after all.

A part of him thinks, _we do have food for years. We’d probably die of old age before we finished it. There’s an entire cellar twice as big as the bunker underneath stacked with food that’d last an entire century. The electricity is self-sustaining. The hot water is, too. The water system is as well. Top notch technology. We have entertainment on the self-sustaining tablets and television and that computer, even without internet. We could —_

_We could live here._

Shit.

He shakes his head.

He can’t believe he considered _that_ , that he thought they could just refuse to leave.

But she _won’t_ want to stay. He knows that. And it’s the right thing. She shouldn’t want to stay. She has a life in front of her. He doesn’t. He doesn’t, and he should accept it as soon as possible.

But if it was up to him?

Shit, he thinks he’d take the deal.

Then again, he never pretended that _he_ wasn’t the desperate half of their atomic fusion, has he?

— —

“Is there something wrong?”

She’s sitting on the sofa doing a crossword with her right hand and the left running through his hair. He has his head on her thigh as he stretches over the rest of the couch. He shakes his head.

“No,” he says, lying, thinking _there are three months left and they’re nowhere near enough and I can’t give you up and I hate that I’m such a mess that I can’t talk about this with you even if whenever I walk in front of that button I think I should push it, maybe, probably, and then I remember you would hate me and I can’t do that_. “It’s fine. I was just thinking.”

He breathes in.

 _If she understands what good for her, she’s going to point out the obvious. As in, that you’re better off when you don’t think and you let others do it for you_.

He shudders a moment, blinking that thought away, wishing Cersei would just fuck off from his head.

“Can I have a penny for your thoughts, then?”

Wait, _what_ —

“It wasn’t anything important,” he answers, rubbing his face against her thigh, her fingers scratching behind his scalp.

“If you say so,” she agrees, not pushing. “But you know, nothing bad in expressing your opinion. By the way, seven letters, is both alcohol and clothing?”

“Vintage,” he smiles a moment later, and she writes it down nodding along.

Fuck.

 _Fuck_ , why is it so unfair that the only thing he wants is getting to keep _this_ and he can never have it? Not like it is _right now_?

He closes his eyes.

He’ll try to enjoy it while it lasts.

— —

A week left and he knows that _she_ knows. He sleeps like shit, he’d had nightmares for the entire last month, every time it was Cersei showing up in them he ended up vomiting his lunch in the bathroom, and she’s worried, he can see that she is, but she doesn’t ask and doesn’t he love her for that, because she knows he wouldn’t or couldn’t answer, and when she draws him into her arms later every single time he feels bile rise up in his throat because he can’t keep her and he shouldn’t want to, not when she’s meant for better things and a better life and not an underground bunker that can seem like a good life prospect just to _him_.

Then the tablet flashes orange.

 _What the_ —

She immediately runs for it, her coffee forgotten.

That’s weird. If it flashed red, it meant they should nuke. If it flashed green, it means that the hatch would open on time and that their time was over.

No one ever said anything about _orange._

She takes it from the wall.

Her lips part.

Her eyes go wide.

“What does it say?” He asks.

She shakes her head. Then she hands it over to him.

Jaime squints, takes it and reads the communicate once.

Then twice.

“ _What the hell_ ,” he blurts.

“I know,” she says.

He re-reads it again, hoping he’s wrong.

But no.

It says that most negotiations that were going on with the Russians, the Americans and the rest of the continent are on the brink of failure, that _his_ own time in the bunker is prolonged indefinitely until he’s told otherwise and he should be ready to fire when the order comes, while as far as Brienne is concerned, they will be here in a day to get her because they need her for some top secret warfare project that most of her idiotic peers couldn’t figure out on their own, and if everything goes right, they’ll have the Russians and the French annihilated before they can strike back.

“I never said I wanted to _help_ them with that,” she whispers. “It wasn’t in the agreement.”

“Sorry to say,” he sighs, “but the agreement usually implies that if _this_ kinda shit happens, you don’t have much leeway to refuse them at this point.”

“I don’t want to,” she says, “I can’t — I mean, I knew what I signed up for here, but — that was not — but _why_?”

He shakes his head. “Since when do they care? And of course _I_ should be stuck down here alone waiting to press that button. Good thing you taught me to cook now.”

She shakes her head. “I can’t believe you’re — Jaime, that’s not fair. We never signed up for _that_. Well, until our time here was finished, but that wasn’t in the cards. And — where would they take me anyway?”

“They’ll send you to Faslane, I think. That’s where they keep most of the nukes. And sorry to say, but if we really go to war —”

“They’ll never send me back, will they?”

“Given how useful you would be?” He laughs. “Apparently _my_ contract is a lifetime bid. But I had nothing to lose. If they turn yours into one, you’re getting a rank and never leaving.”

She bites down on her tongue. “I — I studied nuclear physics to produce _clean_ energy,” she whispers. She looks like she’s about to cry. “Or better, to find out if we could use it to produce clean energy without the radioactive waste. I didn’t — for _that_. And what’s the goddamned point? If they really nuke both French and Russians, don’t they think they will be hit back?”

“They think that if they go first and without warning and with something more refined than _our_ missile here that I suppose you should help them with then no one might reiterate.”

She makes a noise at the back of his throat, dropping into one of the seats. Jaime raises his eyes. The nuke is outside the glass barrier. He looks back at the opposite wall, where the button is right there under the glass.

A button he _will_ have to press. Most likely when his father and his comrades decide it’s the right time.

Then again —

 _Then again_ , if he has to, if he can’t get out of it —

“Unless that doesn’t happen.”

“And _how_ doesn’t that happen, pray tell?” She asks, her eyes tearing up, biting down on her lip. Her cheeks are flushed red under her freckles and to anyone else she’d have looked ridiculous, maybe, but not to _him_.

He breathes.

Well.

Here it goes. He stands, then drops to one knee in front of her, his left hand reaching out for hers.

“I press it before they give the order.”

Her eyes move from her lap to his own.

“ _What_?”

He holds her stare. “I do it before they ask. I go there, open the glass and press that button and fire that nuke. The moment it happens, wherever it lands, well. It will be seen as a declaration of war, won’t it?”

“Yes, exactly, which means that everyone out there —”

“Dies? And won’t they die anyway since there’s no way that plan will actually save anyone? We were all doomed the moment this entire shitshow started, you know it, I know it, and at this point, I think I gave enough for _them_ and gotten nothing in return. I can fire it and then no one else is ever going to come for us, and we’re — there’s no way anyone could get in here. It can only be opened from the inside or from someone who has the codes outside. We’re far enough underground that nothing that happens out there would touch us. And if it means that I’d get to spend what’s left of my worth for nothing life down here with _you_ , well. I’ve thought about it enough to know I’d push it.”

He expects her to push him away.

She moves her hands up to his face, her thumbs cupping his cheekbones, and his entire chest fills up with warmth.

“Jaime, you aren’t saying you’d risk starting a nuclear war for _me_.”

“I’m saying I would if it was the one way I had to stay with you, if you’d have me,” he presses, his hand going to her wrist, squeezing it slowly. “Never mind that honestly, what’s the fucking point? We got to the bring of a damned nuclear war. If this planet tried to annihilate us already, it would just do it for its own good. Your damned colleagues up there don’t deserve you, the military sure as hell doesn’t, and I know _I_ don’t, either, but I can’t fire that and stay down here if they forget to come pick me up knowing you’ll be out there and that I’ll never see you again.”

“This was never about _deserving_ ,” she says, her eyes filling up with unshed tears. “Jaime, I — why are you saying you wouldn’t? There’s no reason for which you —”

“Come on,” he laughs, but it’s the saddest laugh he’s ever uttered, “you’ve seen me. What was left that was worth anything died in the war and my sister was right when she said I’m a right proper idiot, probably, but then again, I had to kill Aerys to do the right thing and it wasn’t worth shit. However many people I saved by doing _that_ , it’s going to get fucked up to hell and back now regardless of what we do. It can be postponed only, at this point, but everything is going to burn out there very soon and if I have to do it, well, I’d rather it be on my own terms. And with you. I won’t if you tell me not to. But I would. I could. I can’t give a damn about anything else.”

Her hands don’t move away. He expects them to, but they don’t. He holds her stare, not knowing what she sees in it, staring at that homely face that never gave him a reason to regret a single thing he’s done for her.

She parts her lips. “You need to stop thinking you’re so worthless,” she whispers, her voice choked, “because to _me_ you’re not. But — do you really believe I’m worth… _that_?”

“‘Course you are,” he replies at once. “I love you, don’t I?”

He’s never told her, now that he thinks about it. They never did. It seemed unnecessary, somehow. But now her eyes go wider and a couple of tears fall, and suddenly it seems like she _has_ taken a decision because she leans down and slams her mouth against his and he kisses back at once, but then she wrenches it away, and —

“I can’t ask you to do it,” she whispers, “unless you let me do it with you.”

For a moment, he can’t believe what he’s heard.

“Brienne, you don’t have to —”

“You — _I love you_ ,” she blurts, almost unbidden, and that warmth in his chest boils into something hotter, scalding — “and I could _never_ ask you to press that button alone for _me_ even if you offered. But you know what, you’re right. We’re fucked anyway and if the choice is to help your father and his friends do it or make it happen myself and spend the rest of my life with you, well, I’d be a right fucking idiot myself if I chose the former, right? But I wouldn’t let you do that on your own. It’s the two of us down here.”

Fuck. _Fuck_ , she means it, and he feels a couple tears fall from his eyes as he smiles tentatively and nods, moving forward, realizing that they never did _anything_ in this room, they barely ever were together in it. When their lips meet, the warmth in his chest isn’t just scalding, it’s _more_ , it’s blistering, and he wonders, _is this how fusion feels like_ as he kisses her — she stands up, bringing her with him, their tongues moving frantically, her hands pulling at his hair, his own grasping at his shoulders, and by the time they part he’s breathless and _she_ is breathless and they’re staring at each other and he doesn’t think he’s ever seen a face as beautiful as hers as she smiles slightly down at him, kisses him softly again and looks at the glass covering the button right on the wall.

He moves away slightly, punches in the code to raise the glass. It does a moment later.

He stares at the red circle in front of him.

He had thought he might feel more conflicted about it, but then her right hand covers his as he raises it up and he thinks, _decades of being with her against pushing the damned thing_ , and for what? For a world that’s fucked to hell and back?

“Last moment to back out,” he says.

“You’re sure,” she whispers, still sounding awed.

“Brienne, I think it was obvious that there's… very little limit I’ll put to the things I do for love.”

He holds her stare.

She says nothing, but wraps her fingers around his own instead.

When he moves his hand, she moves her along with his, closer and closer and _closer_ —

He slams his palm against the button as her fingers squeeze his.

The alarm immediately sounds, but there’s no way to take it back. He’d know that. He turns, glancing towards the glass wall, and he sees the nuke move into place, the floor moving to put it in the right place, and he knows that in five minutes it will launch, and he cares nothing for where it ends.

He turns back towards Brienne, hoping he doesn’t see regret when he looks at her, but _no_ , her blue eyes are wide and wet as she stares at him, but she’s also half-smiling, and she’s breathing so fast he thinks she might faint, but then she grabs his hand tighter, and —

“We did it,” she whispers.

“And I don’t regret it for one second,” he says, and then her hands are on his face and they’re kissing again, and _again_ , and a moment later she grabs him by the shoulders and pushes him down on the chair, gets rid of her jeans and straddles him, and the chair creaks but it doesn’t matter, not when her mouth is on his and her tongue is hot against hers and he gets to keep _this_ until he lives, and they don’t have to leave anymore, do they, and she’s kissing him with such force he’s almost taken aback by it, his entire body searing with heat, as he sees the nuke getting ready to launch with the corner of his eye, and when she sinks on him a moment later he groans and screams her name and grasps at her hair.

“Jaime,” she blurts, her mouth moving across his face, dropping kisses everywhere, “ _Jaime_ , fuck, you — we just —”

“I don’t _care_ ,” he groans, holding her close as she meets his thrusts, riding him faster and _faster_ , “I have you, I have _this_ , I know I don’t deserve it —”

“Shut _up_ ,” Brienne blurts, her hands going to his face again, shaking his head, “fuck, how can you still say that when you didn’t even blink before going for it? What would I deserve according to you now? How can I possibly deserve more than someone who’d launch a war on his own so that I wouldn’t have to help others do it?” She’s crying now, but she’s also smiling, and she doesn’t sound angry — “Stop that,” she says. “I don’t know who made you think that you’d be worth so little, but if we never leave here then I’m just sorry I will never have the chance to tell them how wrong they were.”

He’d have never thought she’d leave him at a loss for words, but right now she _is_ , and he doesn’t honestly know what to say, not that it matters right now because the room is shaking as the nuke launches for good and everything is done for good or bad, and so he kisses her as the ground shakes and the walls do as well, thrusting up inside her as her hips can’t downwards and she’s still wet and red-hot scalding around him, same as his hand feels searing as he pulls her neck down, and she’s blistering and he is, too, and he wonders, _is that bomb as scalding as the two of us right now_ , lost in its own fusion the way _they_ are losing themselves in theirs, and as he comes inside her the moment she screams his name and clenches around him lowering herself down on his dick one last time, he thinks of how they’ll hold on to each other looking up in the dark as if it was a night sky they will never see again, he thinks of how they have all the time in the world now, and he thinks of how she’s holding him right now realizing that she can do it every day now for the entirety of their lives, and —

Maybe the world is ending right now.

Maybe it will in a short while.

But does it really matter when for _them_ it took going down into their little, warm bunker under the ground to find some happiness in it?

He smiles into the slower, lazier kiss they exchange in the afterglow, as the shaking stops and the alarms blare and the nuke is out in that world they will never see again in the flesh, and —

No.

No, it matters none, not when everything that matters to him is right here.

And if to _have_ it and to be with her, he had to learn to love that forsaken nuke, well.

 _The things I do for love_ , he whispers into her mouth, and he finds that there’s no loathing whatsoever to be heard in it.

 

 

End.


End file.
